Best of
Museums

2008

A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World


Marcia Tucker - 2008
    Tucker came of age in the 1960s, and this spirited account of her life draws the reader directly into the burgeoning feminist movement and the excitement of the New York art world during that time. Her own new ways of thinking led her to take principled stands that have changed the way art museums consider contemporary art. As curator of painting and sculpture at the Whitney, she organized major exhibitions of the work of Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, and Richard Tuttle, among others. As founder of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, she organized and curated groundbreaking exhibitions that often focused on the nexus of art and politics. The book highlights Tucker's commitment to forging a new system when the prevailing one proved too narrow for her expansive vision.

Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World


Sharon Waxman - 2008
    Her journey takes readers from the great cities of Europe and America to Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy, as these countries face down the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She also introduces a cast of determined and implacable characters whose battles may strip these museums of some of their most cherished treasures.For readers who are fascinated by antiquity, who love to frequent museums, and who believe in the value of cultural exchange, Loot opens a new window on an enduring conflict.

Lonely Planet St Petersburg


Lonely Planet - 2008
    Experience the white nights during the summer months, see the Rembrandts housed in the Hermitage, or climb up St Isaac's for a panoramic view; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of St Petersburg and begin your journey now!Inside Lonely Planet St Petersburg Travel Guide:Colour maps and images throughoutHighlights and itineraries show you the simplest way to tailor your trip to your own personal needs and interestsInsider tips save you time and money and help you get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spotsEssential info at your fingertips - including hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, and pricesHonest reviews for all budgets - including eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, and hidden gems that most guidebooks missCultural insights give you a richer and more rewarding travel experience - including history, art, literature, cinema, music, architecture, and politicsFree, convenient pull-out St Petersburg map (included in print version), plus over 28 neighbourhood mapsUseful features - including With Kids, Day Trips, and Month-by-Month (annual festival calendar)Coverage of Petrograd & Vyborg Sides, Vasilyevsky Island, Sennaya, Kolomna, Historic Heart, Smolny, Vosstaniya, and moreeBook Features: (Best viewed on tablet devices)Zoom-in maps and images bring it all up close and in greater detailDownloadable PDF and offline maps let you stay offline to avoid roaming and data chargesSeamlessly flip between pagesEasily navigate and jump effortlessly between maps and reviewsSpeedy search capabilities get you to what you need and want to seeUse bookmarks to help you shoot back to key pages in a flashVisit the websites of our recommendations by touching embedded linksAdding notes with the tap of a finger offers a way to personalise your guidebook experienceInbuilt dictionary to translate unfamiliar languages and decode site-specific local termsThe Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet St Petersburg, our most comprehensive guide to St Petersburg, is perfect for those planning to both explore the top sights and take the road less travelled.Looking for more extensive coverage? Check out Lonely Planet's Russia guide for a comprehensive look at all the country has to offer. Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet, Tom Masters, and Simon Richmond.About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in.TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

Lost Treasures of the Bible: Understanding the Bible through Archaeological Artifacts in World Museums


Clyde E. Fant - 2008
    This selection of more than one hundred artifacts -- many of them relatively unknown -- illuminates the history, culture, and practices of the biblical world as a whole. Each entry also outlines that particular object's relevance for understanding the Bible. To assemble this amazing collection, Clyde Fant and Mitchell Reddish themselves traveled to each of these museums throughout the world. Their photographs, descriptions, and histories of the various artifacts enable readers to appreciate these significant objects to an extent not usually enjoyed by even the most experienced museum visitors. For travelers visiting such famous museums as the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum, or the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, this volume will be an indispensable companion. Each artifact is located not only as to its museum site but also by its specific identification number, which is particularly valuable for smaller and lesser-known objects -- true “lost treasures.” Fant and Reddish's Lost Treasures of the Bible will serve as an informative, accessible guide to globe-trotters and armchair travelers alike.

Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways


Richard Carlin - 2008
    He created Folkways Records to achieve his goal, not just a record label but a statement that all sounds are equal and every voice deserves to be heard. The Folkways catalog grew to include a myriad of voices, from world- and roots-music to political speeches; the voices of contemporary poets and steam engines; folk singers Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie and jazz pianists Mary Lou Williams and James P. Johnson; Haitian vodoun singers and Javanese court musicians; deep-sea sounds and sounds from the outer ring of Earth's atmosphere. Until his death in 1986, Asch—with the help of collaborators ranging from the eccentric visionary Harry Smith to academic musicologists—created more than 2000 albums, a sound-scape of the contemporary world still unequalled in breadth and scope. Worlds of Sound documents this improbable journey. Along the way you'll meet:A young Pete Seeger, revolutionizing the world with his five-string banjo The amazing vocal ensembles of the Ituri PygmiesNorth American tree frogsElla Jenkins's children's musicLead Belly singing "The Midnight Special"The nueva canción of Suni Paz.Folkways became a part of the Smithsonian Institution's collections shortly after Asch's death. Today Smithsonian Folkways continues to make the "worlds of sound" Moe Asch first dreamed of 60 years ago available to all. The Folkways vision is expansive and all-inclusive, and Worlds of Sound advances its rich and lively spirit.

Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art


Jennifer A. González - 2008
    In Subject to Display, Jennifer Gonz�lez offers the first sustained analysis of their contribution, linking the history and legacy of race discourse to innovations in contemporary art. Race, writes Gonz�lez, is a social discourse that has a visual history. The collection and display of bodies, images, and artifacts in museums and elsewhere is a primary means by which a nation tells the story of its past and locates the cultures of its citizens in the present.All five of the American installation artists Gonz�lez considers have explored the practice of putting human subjects and their cultures on display by staging elaborate dioramas or site-specific interventions in galleries and museums; in doing so, they have created powerful social commentary of the politics of space and the power of display in settings that mimic the very spaces they critique. These artists' installations have not only contributed to the transformation of contemporary art and museum culture, but also linked Latino, African American, and Native American subjects to the broader spectrum of historical colonialism, race dominance, and visual culture. From Luna's museum installation of his own body and belongings as "artifacts" and Wilson's provocative juxtapositions of museum objects to Mesa-Bains's allegorical home altars, Osorio's condensed spaces (bedrooms, living rooms; barbershops, prison cells) and Green's genealogies of cultural contact, the theoretical and critical endeavors of these artists demonstrate how race discourse is grounded in a visual technology of display.

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night


Vincent van Gogh - 2008
    His procedure followed the trend set by the Impressionists of "translating" visual light effects with various color combinations, yet this goal was grafted onto his desire to interweave the visual and the metaphorical in order to produce fresh and original works of art. These different artistic concerns found themselves powerfully bound together in Van Gogh's nocturnal and twilight paintings and drawings. This illuminating volume, published to accompany the first exhibition to focus on this aspect of Van Gogh's career, presents new insight on Van Gogh's depictions of night landscapes, interior scenes and the effects of both artificial and natural light on their surroundings. Representing all periods of the artist's career, this volume features more than 100 images of superlative quality, including large reproductions of works by Van Gogh, details of iconic paintings and images of works by other artists that were important to the development of Van Gogh's oeuvre. Essays by the exhibition organizers provide historical and personal contexts for better understanding the artist's motives and offer in-depth studies of the technical and stylistic aspects of Van Gogh's work. Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 in The Netherlands. His career as an artist lasted only 10 years, but he produced almost 2,000 paintings and works on paper during this brief period, many of them described or sketched in his extensive correspondence with his brother Theo. Van Gogh is most celebrated for his bold use of color and expressive painting technique. He spent his last years in the south of France, where he painted many of his most famous works. He died in Auvers-sur-Oise, just north of Paris, on July 29, 1890.

Strawbery Banke: A Seaport Museum 400 Years in the Making


J. Dennis Robinson - 2008
    The ten-acre museum campus, New Hampshire's earliest neighborhood, began as a British plantation on a tidal inlet. Abandoned by its founders in 1635, the settlement "accidentally" named Strawberry Bank survived to become New Hampshire's only seaport. A century later the bustling Portsmouth waterfront was home to royal governors, tall ships, skilled artisans, and wealthy merchants. When the maritime economy crashed and the city burned in the nineteenth century, the "Puddle Dock" neighborhood drew waves of immigrant families to its ancient low-rent buildings. Then in the twentieth century, fearful of urban "blight," a federal redevelopment project went off here like a neutron bomb. The population and the junkyards disappeared, but a grassroots preservation movement saved many historic buildings from the bulldozers of progress.Rich with pictures and painstakingly researched, this work is actually two books in one. The first tracks 400 years of history along the Piscataqua River with dramatic tales that will surprise even New Hampshire natives--and reads like a thrilling adventure novel. The story then goes behind the scenes to the controversial founding of Strawbery Banke Museum in 1958. Tapping into private letters, unpublished records and personal interviews, the author explores the politics of preservation in a small blue-collar city. Always lively, this highly readable history tracks modern Portsmouth from a gritty working seaport to a cultural heritage destination, assessing what is gained and what is lost along the way.

Curiosity and Enlightenment: Collectors and Collections from the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century


Arthur MacGregor - 2008
    With the aid of 200 images, this book offers for the first time a wide-ranging survey of this entire process as well as the changing preoccupations of collectors.

Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.


Metropolitan Museum of Art - 2008
    

The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations


Amanda J. Cobb-Greetham - 2008
    It represents both the United States as a singular nation and the myriad indigenous nations within its borders. Constructed with materials closely connected to Native communities across the continent, the museum contains more than 800,000 objects and three permanent galleries and routinely holds workshops and seminar series.This first comprehensive look at the National Museum of the American Indian encompasses a variety of perspectives, including those of Natives and non-Natives, museum employees, and outside scholars across disciplines such as cultural studies and criticism, art history, history, museum studies, anthropology, ethnic studies, and Native American studies. The contributors engage in critical dialogues about key aspects of the museum’s origin, exhibits, significance, and the relationship between Native Americans and other related museums.

The Green Museum: A Primer on Environmental Practice


Sarah S. Brophy - 2008
    Environmentally friendly practices are crucial to the mission of our museums, which, as houses of preservation, are uniquely suited to modeling green behavior and sustainability. In The Green Museum, authors Sarah Brophy and Elizabeth Wylie offer a complete handbook to guide museum staff in incorporating green design into new construction and day-to-day operations. Sustainable practices can save on operating costs and even make museums attractive to new fundraising sources, as Brophy and Wylie show in case studies of museums that have already taken steps to become green. In this easy-to-read book, the authors demystify the process of going green, including detailed explanations of the basics of recycling, options for environmentally friendly exhibit design, and how to conduct energy audits. The Green Museum is full of practical information for museums of any size and a vital resource for every museum that wants to remain relevant in an increasingly green world. The Green Museum is printed with soy-based ink on recycled stock.

Aegean Waves: Artworks of the Early Cycladic Culture in the Museum of Cycladic Art at Athens


Nicholas Chr. Stampolidis - 2008
    This beautiful illustrated book explores these periods in Cycladic culture and how the natural environment of the islands shaped its art. It also addresses the settlements of these periods and the artifacts produced by their potters, marble-carvers, and metalworkers. Maps are interspersed throughout the text, along with a chronological table, plans of known settlements, cemeteries, and individual tombs, as well as photographs of archaeological digs and landscapes by well-known photographers. Items from the Museum’s Collection are also presented, followed by commentary and comprehensive text that venture at the items’ probable significance and functions.

National Standards and Best Practices for U.S. Museums


American Association Of Museums - 2008
    museum profession's current operating standards in areas from public accountability to facilities and risk management are available in a single publication. This guide is an essential reference work for the museum community, presenting the ideals that should be upheld by every museum striving to maintain excellence in its operations.  An introductory section explains how virtually anyone associated with museums will find the book valuable, from trustees to staff to funders and the media. It is followed by a full outline of the standards, including the overarching Characteristics of Excellence and the seven areas of performance they address. Throughout the book is commentary by Elizabeth E. Merritt, former director of AAM's Museum Advancement and Excellence Department and founding director of AAM's Center for the Future of Museums.

Georgia's Lighthouses


Patricia Morris - 2008
    Only three years later, in 1736, the first lighthouse was built on Tybee Island. Beginning there at the mouth of the Savannah River, this volume travels down the coast, telling the very different stories of the Cockspur Light, Sapelo Light, St. Simons Light, and Cumberland Light, which is now located on a private island. Rich in history, these lighthouses help to define the story of Georgia's 100-mile coastline. Of the lighthouses built, only five remain today; two are operational lights--Tybee Island and St. Simons Island.